Cataclysmic Era: I can unlock the tech tree

"Professor, what if..."

Wei Rong looked at the carbon nanotubes in front of him with trepidation and said softly, "What if this sample also..."

"stop!"

Lü Yongchang interrupted Wei Rong impatiently: "There's no 'what if'!"

"I can't believe our luck could be that bad; we managed to run into something with only a 3.1% chance!"

Wei Rong smiled wryly, subconsciously reaching out to touch the tip of his nose, then turned his head to look to the side.

"Xiao Wang, have the test results come out yet?"

The researcher, referred to as Xiao Wang, looked somewhat anxious: "Academician Wei, it'll be ready soon, just wait a little longer!"

"..."

Wei Rong withdrew his gaze, his tightly pursed lips turning slightly white.

The waiting time was extremely agonizing.

After all, in a sense, this carbon nanotube is the hope of the entire laboratory!

"The results are in!"

"1590 GPa!"

Xiao Wang's face was full of excitement as he raised his arms and shouted, "Professor Lü, we did it!"

Upon hearing the shout, Lü Yongchang and Wei Rong immediately stood up from their chairs!

To avoid errors, the two conducted several more tests.

Fortunately, this multi-walled carbon nanotube did not disappoint the entire laboratory's expectations.

"1590 GPa..." Wei Rong stared blankly at the test results in front of him, muttering to himself, "Unbelievable..."

As for Lü Yongchang, he breathed a sigh of relief.

It was a success.

In just a month or so, the entire laboratory produced more than 6,000 samples.

With such a massive workload, even with a large number of researchers in the laboratory, the tasks assigned to each person are still extremely heavy.

Looking at the bright smiles on the faces of the researchers around him, Lü Yongchang smiled faintly.

But he quickly pulled himself out of the joy of success.

"Academician Wei, it's not time to celebrate yet!"

Lü Yongchang gently reminded him, "Next, we need to solve the problem of industrial preparation of these multi-walled carbon nanotubes."

Wei Rong was taken aback, and his expression immediately turned serious.

"Professor, how many sizes of carbon nanotubes do you think we need to produce?"

After this incident, Wei Rong completely abandoned his old-fashioned ideas.

At least, Lü Yongchang's scientific intuition is trustworthy!

After a moment of contemplation, Lü Yongchang said in a deep voice, "It has to be at least in the kilometer range."

"Also, the industrial-scale production plan is up to you!"

As he spoke, he patted Wei Rong on the shoulder meaningfully.

Wei Rong: "???"

"what?"

Although he had long heard that Professor Lü had a habit of being a "hands-off manager," he never expected that this scene would come so quickly!

"What do you mean, 'huh'?" Lu Yongchang curled his lip and said irritably, "There are still many details about the space elevator that haven't been perfected. I don't have that much time to fix this cable problem."

Wei Rong: "..."

"Okay, okay..."

Seeing the expression on Wei Rong's face, Lü Yongchang nodded in satisfaction.

Although he was a bit ugly, you could still see the excitement hidden in his smile!

I imagine Academician Wei is really looking forward to this mission!

As he pondered this, Lü Yongchang turned and walked toward the door of the carbon nanotube laboratory.

……

After handing over the task of industrializing kilometer-scale carbon nanotubes to Wei Rong, Lü Yongchang returned to his office.

Having solved the problem of cable materials, another challenge immediately arose.

The problem of building a space elevator.

The ideal construction plan for a space elevator is to build it from top to bottom.

Simply put, the completed cable is transported to an altitude of 9.1 kilometers above the Earth's surface, and then slowly lowered back to the ground.

Subsequently, the cables were secured to the foundation, and the remaining construction work commenced.

Because of the presence of cables, the rudimentary space elevator was now operational.

The problem of transporting supplies was thus easily solved.

However, this process, though simple in theory, is extremely difficult in practice.

Putting everything else aside, the weight of those 9.1 kilometers of cable alone is a major problem.

Even though carbon nanotubes have only one-sixth the density of steel.

According to Zero's calculations, in order to ensure the stability of the spaceport, the diameter of the entire cable will reach an astonishing five meters!

Furthermore, in order to increase the tensile strength of the cable, they also need to add a large number of long spikes during the weaving process.

With a diameter of 5 meters and a length of 9.1 kilometers, the weight of this cable is something that current aircraft cannot bear!

As for building a small spaceport first, and then building cables on it...

This is even less likely to work!

This is completely putting the cart before the horse!

If Lü Yongchang can quickly transport these supplies to space now, then why does he need to build a space elevator?

And so... the space elevator manufacturing plan fell into a vicious cycle.

……

Lu Yongchang sat at his desk with a furrowed brow, his pen scribbling aimlessly on the A4 paper in front of him, making a series of irregular scratching sounds.

Su Yutong, who was engrossed in her studies, twitched her ears slightly and looked up in the direction of Lü Yongchang.

A hint of surprise flashed in Su Yutong's eyes when she saw Lü Yongchang's appearance.

In all this time, she had never seen Lü Yongchang behave like this before!

After thinking for a moment, she cautiously asked, "Professor, are you having any problems?"

Lu Yongchang abruptly stopped writing with his pen, followed by a long sigh.

"Yes, we've encountered a big problem..."

Lu Yongchang turned to look at Su Yutong beside him, and met her eyes full of doubt.

A thought struck him, and he briefly described the problem he was facing.

Finally, a deeply hidden glint of expectation flashed in his eyes: "Do you understand? What do you think should be done?"

Su Yutong nodded thoughtfully.

"Professor, since the small spaceport plan is not feasible, why not manufacture the cables on the Xuan Nu II?"

Lu Yongchang was slightly taken aback, and subconsciously retorted.

"Are you kidding me?"

"The size of the Xuan Nu II is not enough to handle the task of manufacturing the cable, and its weight is also insufficient to serve as a counterweight for the space elevator."

"As for larger spaceplanes... they can only be built at spaceports."

Su Yutong chuckled lightly: "If one isn't enough, how about ten? Or twenty?"

Just as Lü Yongchang was about to shake his head in rebuttal, a flash of inspiration struck him!

He's getting stuck on something!

A gleam of excitement flashed in Lü Yongchang's eyes. He abruptly turned around, sat back down at his desk, and began writing rapidly on the A4 paper in front of him with his pen.

Seeing this, a smile flashed in Su Yutong's eyes.

The next second, she buried her head in the pile of documents in front of her again.

P.S. It's Children's Day, I went out for hot pot with my girlfriend, so only two updates... QAQ